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QuotW This was the week when a judge ordered a probe into allegations of a confidentiality breach after Samsung execs were said to have viewed secret Apple docs they should never have clapped eyes on.

As part of its IP spat with Samsung, Apple had to disclose a number of its patent agreements – with Nokia, Sharp, Philips, Ericsson and others – to Samsung's lawyers.

This is all above board, but according to Nokia's testimony in a court filing, at least one of the company's execs seemingly knew details about the Apple-Nokia licence he should not have known.

The head of Samsung's IP Center, Dr Seungho Ahn, is alleged to have told Nokia bods that he knew the terms of its deal with Apple, allegedly adding the comment "all information leaks".

The judge ordered the South Korean chaebol to cough up email records and witnesses so that the court can determine if its lawyers spoke out of turn.

This was also the week in which the world witnessed the destruction of the Silk Road, an anarchic Tor-based online drug superstore where the substances were paid for in Bitcoin. FBI officers arrested a man they allege to be the shadowy leader of the Silk Road, who goes by the name of the Dread Pirate Roberts.

The Feds, meanwhile, have alleged in their complaint that the Dread Pirate in reality sports the rather boring moniker of Ross William Ulbricht.

Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the internet today. From in or about January 2011, [the defendant] owned and operated an underground website known as "Silk Road," that provided a platform for drug dealers around the world to sell a wide variety of controlled substances via the internet.

"We're trying to be careful not to get people too excited," said Valve chief Gabe Newell back in 2012. He was, of course, talking about the release of Half Life 3, which still hasn't been announced. However, the internet exploded in excitement this week when a European patent was filed for the name of this long-awaited piece of vapourware. Patient, gamers...

Patience is a virtue in all walks of life, we were reminded, when US President Barack Obama told the American public – and his Republican rivals – that just as they wait for the iOS 7 bugs to be ironed out, they could wait for the glitches in his new healthcare system to be fixed. The president said:

Like every new law, every new product rollout, there are going to be some glitches in the sign-up process along the way that we will fix. Consider that just a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system, and within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it.

I don't remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads or threatening to shut down the company if they didn't. That's not how we do things in America. We don't actively root for failure.

This was also the week where it was revealed that scientists had found, er, tupperware on one of Saturn's moons. The robotic Cassini probe detected small amounts of propylene in the grim, toxic atmosphere of Titan.

This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene. That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom - that's polypropylene.

In other news, Rockstar, the gang behind Grant Theft Auto V, was smacked hard by the popularity of its new product after the game's release. Its servers buckled under the weight of gazillions of fans who wanted to play the new version of the drive'n'massacre franchise.

As well as promising to address the small issues, Rockstar also said that no one would simply be able to buy their way to GTA dominance when it introduces in-game purchases using real cash. In a statement, it said:

No one can begin GTA Online and simply spend a lot of money out of the gate to get a leg up. You will have to earn your stripes.

Of course, people go to all sorts of lengths to get those elusive stripes. Take Hunter Moore for instance, who made millions from allowing vengeful exes to upload pictures of their former lovers. He spoke to The Register this week to slam plans to ban the "revenge porn" genre, of which his former website, Is Anyone Up?, was once the most infamous example. (The site has since been bought by an anti-bullying organisation.)

Under a new Californian bill, anyone caught uploading posting nude pictures without the subject's consent or with the intention of causing "serious emotional distress" could face up to six months in prison and a $1,000 fine.

Moore spoke out against the legislation – passed on 1 October by the state's governor – to make revenge porn illegal:

These stupid old white people are even more stupid to think they can stop it. We are animals. We are sexual. Maybe they need a class on reality: don't give your kid a phone.

Someone else that could do with some real world education is the author of a missive sent to one of our scribes in response to THATGTA V article. We haven't had a Flame Of The Week for a while, but this one was a corker:

Does it matter to you when your fellow humans are debased and belittled, for sport? Are you human, sir? Are you a being with a conscience? Let me guess - you're a regular consumer of pornograpgy [sic], aren't you? It's all just a big joke, love and sex... Seeing your idea of journalism, I don't expect to enlighten or persuade anything like you. I'm just calling you out while you run away from yourself.

Losers like you have had your say and your day, but you don't own this planet and if you want to sell out the species to the satanists, you're gonna have a long fight on your hands.

I think it's time we actually did run away from ourselves. So until next week, sleep tight kiddies. And watch out for those Satanists. ®